The Theatre
Star Parts Without Stars
[" MAGDA." BY REBMANN. SUDERMANN. AT THE NEW THEATRE.-:—" GHOSTS." BY HENRIK IBSEN. AT THE ARTS
THEATRE CLUB. " OTHELLO." AT THE' SAVOY.] - - FOR some obscure 'reason, the theatrical managers appear at the moment to have fallen into a passion of revivalism. They are bent upon giving us a series of plays (nineteenth century or earlier) which contain star parts for great actors and actresses. The star parts are there, twinkling visibly, in brilliance and bigness, out of the btilk of the_plays ; but where are the great actors and actresses ? It is not unkind, it is merely the statement of a very obvious fact, to remark that they do not exist.
Then why reproduce the plays—unless they, happen to be good ones ? Is it in the topsy-turvy biological hope that the organ may create the need, and so the thing or person ; that the presentation of star -parts may in time tempt a genuine star into existence, or (more plausibly) that by constantly playing big parts small actresses may become great ones ? In that case, the period of expectancy may be long and painful. One wishes the players would practise in private ; emerging in the West End night sky only when their genius is in full blaze.
Take Sudermann's Magda for example.
It is a dreary provincial tragedy, based on its period's low obsession about respectability and honour as identifiable (in women) with chastity ; and about twenty years ago the late Mr. A. B. Walkley was already writing that his receptivity in regard to it had reached " saturation point." Well may he have felt exhausted ! Under polyglot titles, as Heimat or Magda or Casa Paterna, Sudermann's " masterpiece" had been played all over the world at the demand of leading ladies who were then unrestrained by producers, and who saw in it the part of their lives. Of these I have seen a German actress whose name I cannot remember, Mrs. Patrick Campbell who improved in this part as the years went by, Sarah Bernhardt who made very little of it, Miss Gladys Cooper who did as well as could be expected, and Eleanora Duse who achieved in it one of the greatest triumphs of her career.
" We wish we had never. seen Mr. Kean " wrote Hazlitt, after seeing somebody else in. one of Kean's parts. Perhaps I ought to wish that I had never seen Eleonora Duse. I tried to forget her before facing Miss Ffrangcon-Davies. Impossible ! Duse Swept Sarah Bernhardt out of recollection in this part ; Miss Ffrangcon-Davies can only make us regret Duse ; and the memory is all the more poignant in that Magda's part permits, according to the text, a word or two of Italian which solicits recollection ; so that, behind the living woman, stands the shadow of the dead one. Let us not demand impossibili- ties. I do not expect the latest leading lady, who has never yet given us any reason for believing that she is a great tragic actress, to wither Magda's wretched lover with hatred and scorn indescribable, as Duse did. I do not ask her to give, like Duse, an extraordinary sense of personal dignity and Indepen- dence ; as of a woman who, against innumerable obstacles, has conquered the world and her own soul, and who is able to say ". I am I " with such pride-as to convince us that this self- assertion justifies all her turbid experience.
These things, no doubt, are miracles reserved for genius. But surely it is not too much to ask an actress to realize that. Magda is a great, or at any rate a famous, woman ; not a saucy or plaintive chit who has been out for a spree one night and is now home for a scolding. And there are lighter passages well within the new Magda's range of which she seems to make nothing. •For instance, the scene with " little sister " Marie, who tells Magda about her engagement. " What is his name ? " Here, again, one can only remember Duse's exquisitely ironical tenderness in echoing "Max, Max, Max ? " —as though to suggest : "What a marvel that a Lieutenant in Germany, should be so beautifully christened ! " For the rest, Miss Ffrankeon-Davies is small, shrinking, shrill and pathetic--dp/oree : and none of this belongs to Magda ; though some of it suits Norah of The Doll's House, and in that part the actress succeeded well enough.
- Miss Thorndike has, of course, much greater experience
than Miss Ffrangeon-Davies. She has recently given us an adequate performance, without offence in it, of Mrs. Alving in Ghosts. I believe that she saw Duse in this part and is perhaps influenced by her in the deliberate quietness of her early scenes. She even underplays it a little. When the increditile Pastor Manders discovers a likeness between Oswald and his dead but not respectable father, Mrs. Alving may permit herself a convulsive movement—a start of repulsion and fear. For the-last thing she wants to believe is that Oswald is his father's son. And Duse thrilled us by her shudder of protest against this recognition. Miss Thorndike does nothing about it. But she plays the horribly pathological last scene with fine restraint, and I am only sorry that she makes up as a faded blonde. I prefer a grey-haired Mrs. Alving. But this play, too—this medical tract—might be given a rest. Ibsen had lost his temper when he wrote it and it bears traces of angry exaggeration and of evidence cooked to enforce a lesson.
Meanwhile, Shakespeare, they tell us, ought never to' rest— stars or none. On our present system he is frequently for- gotten ; but it so happens that we have had, or are soon to have, a troop of ,Hamlets, Mr. Ainley's, Mr. Gielgud's, and, next, a celebrated German rendering. Let us wait for the German I There appears, while we wait, Mr. Paul Robeson as Othello—one who is not compelled " conscientiously to black himself all over," since nature has done the colonring: Mr. Robeson, as all who saw him in Emperor Jones will admit, is a very remarkable actor.
Let us recall Thomas Fuller's phrase, and speak of " the image of God carved in ebony." So this Othello presents himself to the eye. To the ear he sounds deep tones which make a sort of music. But unluckily Mr. Robeson's articulation in poetic speech is not perfectly clear for separate syllables. And, in general, criticism of his performance must admit that he misses the romantic aspect of Othello, minimizing- such famous passages as " it is the cause," the final speech with its far-off references, the lines naming " the Pontic Sea"—all that suggests the background of peril and adventure encountered that appeal in the Moor to our imagination, as they appealed to Desdemona's. The scenes of awakening and their convulsive jealousy he plays better'; but, alas ! it is not enough ; behind these bodily tortures one must feel the agonized, noble mind. And all through there is a sort of reluctant abasement—a kind of inferiority complex—lurking in this Othello, who is not helped, one must add, by the polite,' dapper, inexplicable Iago of Mr. Maurice Browne—to whom we owe this production. The best acting comes from Miss Peggy Ashcroft—a mild, very English Desdemona—and from Miss Sybil Thorndike —a fine, vigorous Emilia, the best I remember to have seen. As usual with poor Shakespeare in the West End, vastly significant passages are cut from the text, in favour of totally unnecessary diversions in the way of dancing, trumpeting, decoration and noisy changes of scene.
RICHARD JENNINGS.
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